Strange Bedfellows
by Djinn1
Summary: A landing party on a deserted planet goes awry...again.


Strange Bedfellows by Djinn

Kirk touches her, and Chapel wants to die. She isn't sure why she was paired with him, doesn't care anymore why the aliens have chosen to put her and the captain together. All there is, all she knows, is his touch, his lips on her skin, his body pressed against her own. His voice, murmuring nonsensical endearments, is all she can hear. He is her world.

Or so she pretends for the bubble-headed perverts that must be watching them. Not that they've seen the aliens since they shot them full of drugs, stole all their clothes, dumped them into these rather spacious padded cages, and left them alone. But still, Kirk doesn't want them to realize that they are plotting escape. Even if that is exactly what he is plotting.

And she likes that he's plotting. It wouldn't be Kirk if he wasn't going for the big finish.

She supposes she should call him Jim. They've certainly done it enough times for her to call him Jim.

"Should I call you Jim?" she asks absently as she leans down to kiss him.

"Probably. What's Spock doing?" Kirk asks her.

"Why? You jealous?" She's astride Kirk, riding him hard and he's not even trying to pretend he doesn't enjoy it.

"Just curious. Why did they keep changing partners on him?" It seemed to take the aliens a long time to figure out which of the landing party would end up with the Vulcan. "I mean us they just stuck together without much thought. Why's he so hard to place?"

"Uh, maybe because he's a cold fish who wouldn't know a good roll in the hay if it kicked him in the nuts?"

Kirk glares at her.

"How the hell do I know what they're thinking? Maybe they just like messing with him?" She kisses Kirk--one of her better efforts in that department--to take any sting out of her words.

They can't hear what is going on in the other cages, there's some kind of baffling material. But they can see. She pulls away from Kirk, tries to look over at Spock, but he's behind her. So she flings her head back as if in the throes of the best sex ever. Which isn't a lie because Kirk certainly knows what he is doing. But she overdoes the head throw and feels a muscle in her neck complain. "Ow."

"Careful." Kirk smiles at her. The aliens probably think it is a tender smile. And actually it is. Twenty hours of drug-enhanced sex will do that for a formerly collegial relationship.

She smiles back at him, lets something dreamy slip into the expression. It's the way she used to look at Spock. All googley-eyed, only this time it's on purpose, and she knows that Kirk knows she's not that big a sap anymore. There are a lot of things he suddenly knows about her that he didn't the day before. She sneaks another look at Spock's cage. "He and Scotty seem to be doing well."

"No they aren't." Kirk is trying to sneak a peak, rolls her to her back and glances quickly over to Spock's cage. "Yes, they are."

"Is it my imagination...?"

"No, it's not. They do look sort of happy."

Kirk rolls off her and they both stop for a moment, staring over at Spock's cage. She has to rise up a bit to see, and Kirk's hand finds her back, rubbing it absently. She moans.

"You like that, Doctor?"

"I do, Captain." She leans over and kisses him, a deep, open-mouthed kiss that they let go on for a very long time to satisfy their captors.

"I hate this," he murmurs, as his hand moves up to her hair. His tongue is hard on hers; his body gives her no quarter as he pushes her down.

"Yeah. Me too. Haa-aa-aaate this."

He laughs.

She does too.

"They're coming with food soon. We have to overpower them."

"Okay. How does it go again? Thumb under fingers for a punch?"

He is moving, not gently, and his words come out between thrusts. "Only if...you want...to break...your thumb."

"Show me," she says.

He pulls her arms over her head, as if he's captured her the way the aliens captured them during their "routine beam down" to what was supposed to be a deserted world--why did it never work out that way?

"Like this," he says, his hands moving her thumb where it's supposed to go.

"Oh, yeah. I remember now." She can't help it; she loves it when he holds her down this way.

"Big faker." He kisses her, but he doesn't let go.

"Do you think we can stop if we want to? If we do get away?"

"When, not if. And sure. In a day or two, I'm sure this will wear off completely." He waggles his eyebrows.

She laughs. "Will we want to?"

"Hell, no." He laughs, but his eyes as he watches her aren't really laughing. "Or maybe I'm just projecting?"

His mind isn't the only thing projecting. She arches, caught up in what he is doing to her...again. She never knew sex with him would be so damn good, or she might have joined Jan's "Kirk 4-Ever" fan club back in the day. When she can finally speak again, she says softly, "You're probably not projecting."

"Probably not? Is that the cautious answer?"

"Oh, definitely." She pulls him down so she can kiss him. Her words may be cautious, her hands and lips certainly aren't.

"Mmmm." Even his moans are sexy. "How is Spock doing?"

"I really think you care a little too much about that." She peeks over. Scotty is doing something--she's not sure precisely what--and Spock looks very, very happy. "Would you call that a smile?"

Kirk looks over, grins at his friend's expression. "Closest he's ever come to one, barring Pon Farr and spores."

"Yeah, those spores were fun." Her voice is beyond bitter.

"Did you end up with someone?"

She laughs. Again, it is not a pretty sound.

"Who?" His eyes glint. He will get to the bottom of this, she knows, or die trying. When she doesn't answer, he pulls her arms over her head again, kisses her neck. "Who?" he whispers in her ear.

"Monrh'an."

"The barber?"

"Shut up, Jim." She sees him smile at that. Suddenly loves that she can call him that. And that she can tell him to shut up, and it makes him happy.

"He's what? A hundred and forty?"

"Shut up, Jim."

"And does his species even have a--"

"--Shut up, Jim." She pushes him to his back, finds her way down to that thing Monrh'an most assuredly did not have, and suddenly her captain has no further interest in talking.

Her captain. Will he even allow them to be together once they get out of this cage? "So, when you asked about projecting..."

Turning to face her, he lies on his side and strokes her face. "Yes...?"

"What were you really asking?"

"I'm not sure."

"Hmmm." She runs her fingers through the hair over his eyes, pushes it back. "I never realized how handsome you are."

"Come on, I'm a god." He winks at her, trying not to laugh.

"Well, actually, you sort of are. But I mean the whole you. The man, not just the pretty body and face."

"Pretty?"

She nods, kisses his frown away. "You're wonderful."

"I am, aren't I?" His words are playful. His tone is too. His eyes, though, aren't.

Her smile fades. She knows the look she is giving him is gentle...tender. "Space is a big place. Lonely."

He nods.

"And you've got this ship full of people."

"People I command."

"Well, some of us less than others." She pushes him over, crawls on top of him and pins his hands down the way he's been doing to her. "Some of us much, much, much less than others."

He laughs.

"I can relieve you of duty."

"Well, hopefully only for a very good reason." His look is strange, like he is asking her a question. A question about them.

"Oh, I thought I'd do it because you forgot our anniversary."

"We have an anniversary?"

She nods. "It'll soon be roughly 24 hours from the time we first had sex."

"Is that the silver or the gold anniversary?"

"It's the rubber one I believe." She winks.

And he laughs. "How long have we known each other?"

"Biblically or in the more normal fashion."

He grins as he begins to explore parts of her that are close enough to his mouth to kiss. "The second one."

"Years." She sighs. He is so damn good with his mouth.

She sneaks a look at Spock. He and Scotty are done with whatever they were doing, and Spock appears to be whispering sweet nothings in Scotty's ear. The engineer is nodding the same way he does when one of his assistants is feeding him fuel equations.

"I think it's safe to say that Scotty is on board with the plan." She rolls off Kirk. "I'm a little unclear how you conveyed to Spock what the plan was."

He didn't do it when they were initially captured. The first fifteen or so hours, they were too busy making like bunnies to play "Escape from the Alien Sex Zoo."

Kirk smiles. "We have hand signals for 'you take the guy on the left, I'll take the guy on the right.' He'll have to improvise from there."

She laughs but knows he's not kidding. He and Spock have been in some tight jams before. They probably have hand signals for a lot of things. "So do you have one for 'Hey, check out the bazoombas on that one'?"

"I'll never tell." He pulls her close. "I'm so tired."

"Me too." She yawns, but her libido doesn't get the message. "I still want you."

"I hear that a lot." He grins again.

"Do you practice that grin in the mirror?"

His smile turns a bit wicked.

"You do! You practice that. It's devastating by design."

"A guy's gotta use every asset he has."

"I agree." She pulls him on top of her. "How about using some of those assets on me."

He does, and she's so busy enjoying it that it takes her a while to realize she's hearing the sound of alien squeals on top of her own, then silence.

"Captain. Doctor. Perhaps you should complete your activity?"

She and Kirk both look up. Spock is standing above him. Parts of him more perkily than others.

"I missed our escape?" Kirk doesn't sound very disappointed, and he takes his time crawling off her.

"We have not escaped yet. There may be more aliens. I find it difficult to accept that they would only send one in to feed us." Spock turns to Scotty. "Have you made any progress with the door?" Is his voice...tender?

Chapel smiles as she follows Kirk out of the cage. She wanders over to let their comrades from the landing party out of their cages. Everyone looks relieved...and just a little bit disappointed.

Kirk strides off, and she hurries after him, trying to minimize any natural tendency to bounce. "Jim," she mutters. "Clothes would be a good thing."

"We'll see if you say that later," he murmurs back, loud enough that only she can hear. Well and super-hearing guy Spock too, judging by the way his eyebrows go up.

Scotty is working diligently on the door, seemingly unconcerned with his state of undress. She catches Spock watching some parts of Scotty more intently than others, and smirks. Another rising eyebrow is his only response to her enjoyment.

Kirk is looking around, as if waiting for something bad to happen. "Scotty...time is of the essence."

"Isn't it always, sir." Scotty breathes in satisfaction as the door opens. "That's a good lass," he says as he pats the door. His eyes meet Spock's, and Chapel doesn't think lasses are what's on his mind right now.

"This way," Kirk says, leading the way to where their clothes lie in an abandoned heap. This was where the aliens shot them full of the drugs that are making them so crazy. She remembers the aliens stripping off their clothes. Remembers being scared...until she was thrown in the cage with Kirk. Funny, that. She wonders if she would have been quite so sanguine if Spock had been her cage-mate.

Spock is rummaging through a drawer, and he pulls out their communicators and phasers. Opening one of the communicators, he says, "Spock to Enterprise."

"Enterprise here, sir." Uhura sounds relieved.

"Eight to beam up."

"Aye, sir." There is a pause, then she says, "There's a lot of interference. It will just be a few more minutes."

Chapel forces herself to stand up straight, trying to look like she's been doing anything but screwing their captain nonstop. She pats at her hair? Does she have bed hair?

"Here," Kirk reaches over, adjusts her collar for her. "Much better." His eyes are warm.

She pitches her voice low, so only he can hear it. "I'm going to recommend to Len that we be relieved of duty until the drug wears off. We should stay in our quarters." She looks at him, wondering if he will see the set up she just gave him.

He does. "Whose quarters?"

"The age-old question."

"Mine are nicer," he says.

"Well, that was easy." She can't help but smile. That was easy--easier than she expected.

"Ready to transport," Uhura says.

Chapel feels the familiar strangeness of being beamed away. As they dematerialize, she sees a bunch of the aliens coming into the room they are fleeing, pushing something that looks like a maid's cart. One of them even waves to her.

"Did you see that?" Scotty asks.

"Damned odd." Kirk leads them out of the transporter room towards sickbay.

"Uhura to Kirk."

"Yes, Commander."

"Sir, we're getting an incoming transmission from the planet."

"A hail?"

"No, sir. A bill. From the Henlexian Pleasure Hotel. Their motto is 'Your fantasy is our reality.'" There is a long silence, then what sounds like muffled laughter. "You get souvenir pictures as part of your vacation package. How many would you like me to order?"

"None!" all eight of them say at once.

"They also included a customer satisfaction survey, shall I read you the questions, Captain?"

"That will be all, Uhura."

"Aye-aye, sir." Again the sound of muffled laughter.

"We can trust her to be discreet." Kirk sounds like he fervently hopes that is the case.

"We can." Chapel prays Uhura doesn't try to pump her for the gory details. She never has any luck keeping the truth from her friend.

"'Bout damn time you got here." McCoy is waiting at the door to sickbay. A big "I can't wait to tease Spock about this" grin on his face. So much for discretion.

Chapel has a sudden terrible feeling that Uhura is up on the bridge right now ordering enlargements of their vacation pictures. She looks at Kirk; he seems to have just had the same idea.

"She's our friend," she says softly.

"Just keep telling yourself that," he says, grinning despite the worry in his eyes. It's still a devastating expression.

She takes Len aside. Explains what happened with as little detail as possible. He scans them and then pulls out a hypo.

"The antidote?" Kirk asks, a note of disappointment in his voice.

"Vitamins," McCoy says with a crooked smile. He loads up an extra one. "A double dose for you, Spock."

"Very funny, Doctor."

"Oh, I have not even begun to get funny, Spock." McCoy winks at the Vulcan, laughs when all he gets is a disdainful eyebrow.

"Okay, you're all off duty for"--he scans them again--"the next twenty-four hours."

"It'll last for another twenty-four hours?" Scotty asks, with a gleam in his eye.

"No, Mister Scott, it'll last for another ten hours. Then I expect you to sleep for the next fourteen." He makes shooing motions. "Now, get out of here. All of you."

Chapel holds back, notices Kirk does too, and they are the last out and end up trailing behind the others. She sees that they are all heading for different lifts, no one wanting to see who is ending up with whom, apparently.

"So, my place?" There is something in Kirk's eyes. Something unsure.

"I don't have to sleep over." She can hear a note of hurt in her voice, wants to make a joke out of this but can't think of one.

"But I want you to. That's what worries me."

"Well, Captain," she says, as she leads him to the lift. "I don't think either of us are in any shape to make major life decisions today. But I do know what we are in shape to do." She waggles her eyebrows at him, and he laughs.

"We'll worry about it tomorrow then?" he asks with another "I taught the sun how to shine" grin.

"That would be my expert medical advice."

"Well, I would never argue with a medical expert." His hand moves quickly over her body--he could be a medical expert himself.

The lift lets them out, and he leads her quickly--very, very quickly--down the corridor toward his quarters. His door opens, and he pulls her into his quarters and has her clothes off almost before she can stop to think that she's never been here before.

"I can call you Jim?"

"You can, Christine." He pulls her close. "Nobody ever calls you Chris, do they?"

She smiles. "Not very much."

"I think I will." He pulls her close. "I like having a name just for me."

"Oh, sure, one night and you're all territorial." But she's smiling, and she smiles even more as he pushes her onto the bed, holding her arms down.

"Yeah, that's me. Cave man captain."

"Cave man lover," she murmurs just before she kisses him.

"Lover." He looks down at her. "I like the sound of that."

"I do too. Now you going to slack off all night or what?"

He laughs and stops talking.

It's fifteen hours before they finally stop being lovers and fall asleep. When morning comes, it is surprisingly easy to get ready together, wonderfully comforting to feel him pull her close for a goodbye kiss before they go their separate ways.

And later, a message appears on her screen. "I don't think it's worn off yet. Any advice?"

"Really?" she writes back. "It's worn off everybody else." Except for maybe Spock and Scotty. She thought she saw the engineer sneaking out of Spock's lab at lunchtime.

"Dinner might help," appears on her screen.

"What kind of doctor would I be if I said no?"

"A terrible one. I'll pick you up at the end of the shift."

She smiles, walks out to the main ward. McCoy is checking some bioreadings.

"Everything okay?" he asks.

"Sure is."

"Jim's okay? I mean in your professional medical opinion?" He is smiling.

"Oh, he's more than okay."

His smile grows bigger. "That's just dandy, darlin'. Now, don't you have some work to do? I can't be carrying all the weight around here."

"Right." She walks back to her office.

"Oh, and Christine?"

She turns.

"Nice pictures."

She's sure that her entire body is blushing. Bubble-headed aliens suddenly seem like the pervert of choice. But she forces herself to keep her head high. "Why, thank you, Len." Then she flees to her office. But as she reaches the door, she turns and says, "You're just jealous."

"Oh, you have no idea, darlin'. No idea." He winks at her, making her wonder which of their crewmates he might like to be caged up with.

"Why, Doctor," she says in her best drawl. "Where did that southern gentleman go?" She sticks her tongue out at him, then turns for the welcoming privacy of her office.

His gentle laughter follows her in.

She works until her shift is over, trying to ignore how certain areas of her body are very tired--and mightily overused.

"Are you as sore as I am?" Kirk whispers from her doorway.

"More." She turns to look at him. "You know you don't owe me anything, right?"

He smiles. "I know that. This is me, here because I want to be." He studies her. "I could say the same thing to you."

She smiles. "You could. But it would be a terrible waste of time."

His grin is more relieved than devastating, and she finds that unexpectedly touching.

"Are you hungry?" she asks.

"Starved." His eyes are gentle. Until they rake over her body in a very slow once over.

"I meant for food."

"Oh, is that what you meant?" He moves aside to let her out of her office. "I don't normally do this, Chris. You know that."

"How long have I served under you, Jim? Believe me, I know." She smiles. "I hope you tipped those aliens."

He smiles, and it's a secretive smile.

"What?"

"I may have inquired about what other vacation packages they offer." This time his smile is a slightly scary expression.

"I don't want to know."

"No?"

"Well...maybe I do." She smiles up at him. "How's Spock?"

"I have no idea." He chuckles. "Actually, he asked how I was. And ummm how you were."

"He inquired about my well being?"

"I think he meant how you were in the sack." Kirk grins. "But maybe I misunderstood?"

"I think you probably did."

The mess hall is busy. For a moment, a lot of eyes are turned to them. Then they turn away again, and life goes on.

"Well. That was anti-climatic." Kirk frowns. "I expected--"

"Censure?"

"Well, at least a little interest." He laughs, but it is a perplexed sound.

"Sweetie, they are interested. They are entirely interested." She pushes him toward the chow line. "But they also love you, and perhaps this is a surprise to you, they want you to be happy."

"With you?"

"Well, I doubt they even considered me as an option." She makes a face that gets a grin out of him. "But yeah, I'll do." She bumps up against him, hears him make a happy sound.

"So, I should relax?"

"Well...not too much." She's sure her grin rivals his for sheer deviltry.

"Understood, Doctor." He sighs, and it is a happy sound.

"So, these other vacation packages...I take it the aliens don't make a practice out of capturing innocent people and humiliating them?"

"Not their repeat customers. Unless, of course, they want to be humiliated. They're pretty much full service in that department."

"Nice." She moves closer, suddenly not caring that parts of her feel like they were in a marathon. "I'm not into humiliation."

"Funny. I'm not either."

She can tell he wants to kiss her, has to force herself not to lean in. "Maybe that drug really hasn't worn off?"

"No, Chris. It's us that hasn't worn off." He winks at her.

The crewman behind them coughs softly.

Kirk turns and sees that the person ahead of them has gotten very far ahead of them. "Sorry," he says, blushing slightly.

"No problem, sir." The crewman smiles. At both of them.

As they hurry to close the gap, she studies Kirk. He looks happy. As happy as she feels. It's a rather unexpected emotion, not one she's had all that much experience with.

She has a feeling she's going to like it.

FIN

14


End file.
